Unofficial news and tips about Google

January 4, 2008

The Rise and Rise of YouTube

This is the first YouTube video, uploaded on April 23rd, 2005. In the video you can see Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube.

One year and a half later, on Oct 21st 2006, Jawed Karim gave a talk at the University of Illinois. YouTube already had 30 million visitors per month and served more than 100 million videos daily. 12 days before this talk, YouTube had been acquired by Google for $1.65 billion.

Jawed Karim sayd that YouTube is a natural extension of other social sites like LiveJournal, Friendster, HotOrNot, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Flickr and its success was possible because it was launched at the right time, when people started to have broadband and digital cameras. YouTube attracted a loyal audience that spent 30 minutes a day watching videos and then spreading their popularity.